


the relative height of a man in space as compared to his height on earth

by bee_kind



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 06:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5324807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_kind/pseuds/bee_kind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA The Soulmark AU no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the relative height of a man in space as compared to his height on earth

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [write love on my skin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835587) by [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview). 



Mark’s twelve when his soul mark shows up and he’s caught so off guard he nearly wrecks his dad’s car. He grabs at his arm for a second, but quickly turns his attention back to the task at hand, snatching the wheel and jerking it sharply to the right so they avoid running into a ditch, but not before Mark Watney Sr. has the chance to lurch out of his seat and bang his forehead on the dash and swear to never let his son drive him home ever again.   
  
When they do make it back to his mother, she’s a combination of excited and irritated so potent that she waves both of her boys off and decides to sleep instead of scold them or ask her son about his new mark. Puns would abound later, he was sure.  
  
He stared at it for hours that first night, reading and rereading the words written in thin silver script.   
  
_“I thought you’d be taller.”_

Was it written in joking or disappointment? He hoped to God it was sarcasm, because there was no way in hell he was ending up shorter than his cousins, not after all the shit they put him through for being the youngest and the skinniest and for being a bit too into plants. He claps a hand over it when his dad comes to give him the ‘talk’ later, the one about how it didn’t matter what race or gender or religion his soul mate was so long as he did right by them. He nods and says, ‘Yes, Sir.’   
  
He grows up, figuratively speaking. He manages to get himself into a science and mathematics high school in the next town over and his dad let’s him drives his car on the way home. It’s better than taking the bus and ducking underneath the arms of his classmates, cramming himself into one of the four across seats in the back. He’s 16 and still only 5’4 and it looks like his soulmate will be disappointed after all. He learns to be a smart ass and defend himself with his words. No one’s gonna swing on a 5’3, 100 pound kid if he can make you laugh. He gets a reputation for being able to diffuse anything. He might not be able to grow, but his plants do. He wins his family four county fair blue ribbons one year. His family doesn’t even grow vegetables, he just gets bored easily and figured out a way to grow sixty-five pound pumpkins.  
  
His senior year he shoots up seven inches -a full inch taller than his tallest cousin, he happily points out, every time they’re over- and he decides his soulmark is meant in jest. He’s not giant by any stretch of the imagination, but 5’10 is a more than respectable height for a lanky 18 year old from Nowhere, Nebraska. His college advisor encourages him to narrow his focus. Apparently ‘liking plants’ isn’t enough of a degree description to get him into anywhere notable. She encourages him to take up botany. He does.   
  
Cornell offers him a free ride and he takes it. Honestly, they should’ve paid him for attending; he graduates in two years and goes back for his PhD immediately after. He’s Dr. Mark Watney, PhD by the time he’s twenty-six and satisfied with the knowledge that he’s probably the smartest person in the room wherever he goes, he starts to worry about his height less.

His alma mater offers him a teaching position at thirty, the same year that they launch Ares One, but he hears that NASA’s been looking for botanists a week prior, and he turns them down. He always thought space was interesting. He finds it a lot less interesting when he gets stranded on a deserted planet with nothing but rocks and the knowledge of his impending demise to keep him company. He tries to make the best of a bad situation, he looks at his soulmark. Once, during one of the Sols in the three hundreds, he gets so bored he decides to see if what they say about being taller in space is true. To his chagrin, it is, and Mark Watney, PhD, Botanist, Astronaut is finally 6 feet tall. He’ll die 6 feet tall, because despite his optimism, he’s sure that he’s gonna die up here and his words will fade from his soulmate’s skin.

But, he doesn’t die. Not in the ascent to intercept with the Hermes, not when he does an untethered spacewalk, not when he gets back to the ship and his crew hugs him so tight he thinks his cracked ribs will break all the way. He lies in bed after his first shower in nearly a year and a half and runs his fingers over the words on his arm, cracked and half covered by sunburns and scar tissue, but still present in thin silver lettering.   
  
_“I thought you’d be taller.”_  
  
He decided that if they were disappointed in his height after all of this, they’d have to get the fuck over it. When he gets back stateside -and shrinks two inches, but that’s beside the point.- they give him a tour of mission control and he gets to meet the people on the technical side of bringing him home. The only one who stands out in his mind Rich Purnell and his heart almost jumps out of his chest when he looks him up and down and says, without hesitation:  
  
“I thought you’d be taller.” He speaks quickly, factually as if he’s in a rush, giving the astronaut an almost scientific once over. Rich’s got the bad habit of slouching, curving in on himself, and not quite looking people in the eye and it’s a knee jerk reaction but Mark scoffs, raises an eyebrow. “We’re the same height, Purnell.” And recognition flashes through the astrodynamicist’s eyes a split second before it hits his own. In the two seconds it takes him to slip an arm out of his oversized cardigan and hold it out so that the astronaut can see the silver writing -his writing- looping his wrist, Rich is running numbers, he can see it in his eyes. Mark holds out his forearm and offers him a half smile, one corner of his mouth quirking up.  
  
“God, I didn’t think I’d ever meet you.”  
  
“Well, getting yourself stranded a couple million miles away certainly didn’t help anything.  And for the record…” He straightens up, spine tightening and shoulders sloping. “I’m _5’11_.”

**Author's Note:**

> this started off as mindy/mark and I don't know what happened but rich/mark is slowly and surely becoming one of my faves.


End file.
